Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A journal's standard author agreement under which the author assigns copyright to the publisher, with the publisher granting back a licence to self-archive the accepted manuscript after a 12-month embargo (a copyright transfer agreement).
- Is an instance
An agreement under which the author retains copyright and grants the publisher an exclusive licence to publish and distribute the article (a licence-to-publish agreement).
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
An informal understanding with no signed contract is not a publishing agreement in this sense; publishers require a formal, typically clickwrap or signed, agreement before publication.
Editorial commentary
A publishing agreement is the contract between an author (or group of authors) and a publisher setting out the terms under which a work will be published: what rights the author retains or transfers, what the publisher may do with the work, any embargo or licensing terms, and, for journal articles, often the terms governing open access options. The single most consequential clause in most publishing agreements is whether it operates as a copyright transfer agreement (CTA) or a licence to publish.
Under a copyright transfer agreement, the author assigns copyright in the work to the publisher outright; the publisher then becomes the rights holder, and the author’s own ability to reuse, reproduce, or redistribute the work afterwards depends entirely on permissions the publisher chooses to grant back, commonly self-archiving rights subject to an embargo. Under a licence to publish, by contrast, the author retains copyright and grants the publisher only the specific rights it needs to publish and distribute the work, exclusive or non-exclusive depending on the agreement, so the author keeps broader ongoing control over reuse. This distinction is why funder mandates such as Rights Retention Strategy policies specifically require authors to attach a rights-retention statement before signing a publishing agreement: once copyright has been transferred, the author can no longer unilaterally grant the rights an open access mandate requires.
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
<role vocab="credit"
vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
vocab-term="Publishing agreement"
vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/publishing-agreement" />{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "DefinedTerm",
"@id": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/publishing-agreement",
"name": "Publishing agreement",
"identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/publishing-agreement",
"description": "A legal contract between publisher and author(s) to publish written material by the author(s). This may involve a single written work, or a series of works.",
"inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/compliance-regulatory#set",
"url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/publishing-agreement",
"sameAs": [],
"license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
"publisher": {
"@id": "https://casrai.org/#organization"
},
"author": {
"@id": "https://casrai.org/#editorial-team"
},
"datePublished": "2026-05-19T19:13:20",
"dateModified": "2026-08-17T01:54:08",
"inLanguage": "en-GB",
"isAccessibleForFree": true
}
